According to an article at CNN, if I got paid for being a good stay-at-home mom, I would be earning \$138,000. Woot!\
Only one more week until my mom comes to town to watch the kids while we’re in Paris. Whee. I am excited to see my mom. Still so much to do before our Paris trip, not the least of which is finding a good book or two. Kevin doesn’t want me to take our hardback Harry Potter books since they are so big and heavy.\
New Supernatural on tonight. YAY for fun tv!\
I need to lock Kevin in his office for half an hour so he can upload some videos to the site I want him to share with you all. He’s just too busy sometimes.\
After dinner one night Max said, “Oh yea, I need to take a puppet of a Roman soldier dressed in a toga to school tomorrow“. I ran and got Kevin, who dropped everything to draw a soldier for Max. YAY!\
Max made a sign that read, “No surgery for intersex kids.” Hmm, I think someone needs to pre-check his reading again.\
Brian continues to be super cute, and I love that Kevin’s second instinct was to take a picture:\
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One week until Paris!
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Birthday Parties and Road Trips
Max, Brian, my dad and brother Steve all drove to Ohio last weekend for Tim’s birthday. We had a great time, and the boys were angels. I’m busy, but here are the photo sets:
- In the Backyard
- Birthday Party!\
I’ve got more to post on, but it’ll have to wait. I want to tell you all about Take Your Child to Work day and Max’s big plans.
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So not crying
Kevin ended up taking Brian with him, so YAY!\
Yesterday I woke up early to help Kevin gather all of the stuff he needed for the trip and to see them off. After goofing off for a couple of hours, I took a nap. An 8 hour nap. I think I have proven that I am the Olympic champion of naps! Woot. I went down at 9:15 in the morning and got up at 5:07 in the evening. It was so nice. (Duh.) After I woke up, I cleaned the sun room, living room, play room, and family room, and organized toys and books.\
Today I woke up early even though I had planned to sleep in. Since I woke up on my own, it was ok. I again goofed off for awhile then tackled the dining room and Max’s room before resting for awhile. YAY for being in charge of my own schedule.\
I should feel guilty for how much I am enjoying being by myself while I clean. But I am not! My weekend alone is now half over. Sad. At least the list of chores I NEED to get done is now half done! -
Crying
Yesterday I sweet talked Kevin into agreeing with me staying home while everyone else goes to Ohio. (By sweet talk I mean that I looked pathetic since my face was throbbing from my earlier dentist appointment and simply asked if he minded.) That would mean three glorious days home alone. I was so relieved and happy that I cried.\
Today, Brian has a runny nose and a slight cough. I am way too considerate of others to send him to Ohio if he really is sick. So, I may be crying again real damn soon. -
The Coolest Thing Ever: Share Your iTunes Library Over AIM
The guys in the next row have gone and pulled off a truly killer app. I know the title gives it away, but it really works! Greg explains how it works, but I know you really just want to go download it.\
What does it do? It makes iTunes’ music sharing work over your buddy list!!! So, instead of being limited to sharing music across just your local network, you can now share your tunes with everyone in your buddy list who has the plugin. Unfortunately, it’s only for Windows at the moment… but I’ve promised a pizza to whoever ports it to OS X. -
More Brian Speak
Just a couple of more weeks until my mom comes to watch the boys. Here is more Brian Speak to help her communicate with him better (some of these I have already mentioned):\
Left= Go that way (he points to indicate which way).\
Go= Thank you or the correct usage of go.\
Frossies= Muffin.\
Wawa= Water or waffles, depends on context.\
Max= Batty.\
Bank= Blanket.\
My Turn and Your Turn= the opposite, but he is getting better about this.\
Pay= Play.\
Coe (rhymes with Joe)= I want or here.\
Blu blu blu again= Let’s do that again.\
Up and down and around= Triangle.\
Doh= No.\
Mostly Brian just leaves off the second half of words:\
Ba= Bath\
Ou’ Si= Outside\
Caw= Car\
There are words he can say perfectly, which makes me laugh:\
Piece of Candy\
Juice\
Read\
Golf club\
Other funny tidbits:\
Brian still says a ton of words we don’t understand, but each day he is enunciating more clearly.\
When he hears an unusual noise, he put his hand near his ear and says, “What’s that sound?”\
When he wakes up in the morning, since he can’t open the baby-proof lock on the door, he yells out, “Mama” or “Help me.” Sometimes I worry about my neighbors calling the cops, heh.\
In the morning he doesn’t want to eat breakfast first thing, just cuddle for awhile and watch tv. He is a little couch potato in the making!\
When we count a small number of items, I say, “One, Two, Three.” After I am done, Brian points to one of the items and says, “Ten. YAY!” I guess all of the books (and toes and finger-counting) that end in ten have been burned into his brain. -
Heartbreaking
The most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen – a photo essay of a mother and son dealing with the horrors of childhood cancer. Don’t read it or look at it if you’re not somewhere you can have a good cry (seriously, unless you have an extremely cold heart or thick skin – you will).
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Happy Family
Kevin comes home today-YAY! The house is a mess, but don’t tell Kevin, ok? I bet he’ll be too tired to notice anyway.\
For the past few days Brian has been asking for some birthday cake. In his cute little toddler voice he asks, “Birthday cake?” Then he takes a moment and adds, “Uncle Steve? Birthday cake?” over and over again. I am not sure what Steve has to do with cake, except that Brian is very fond of both. Steve does have a tendency to say, “Caaaaake” in a Homer Simpson-like way at every birthday gathering. Maybe that is what Brian is picking up on. I told Brian I didn’t have any but we would go see Uncle Tim soon and we would have birthday cake there. Yesterday afternoon passed without a single plea for birthday cake, yay! except for one quick mention in the grocery store. Later the kids were drawing and Brian said, “Uncle Steve” and Max replied, “What about Uncle Tim?” Brian piped up, “Birthday cake!”\
Max left some dandelions for a little girl down the street today. How cute is that?\
My face is acting up again. Stupid face. So I went to the dentist and the tooth next to my recently root canaled tooth needs a root canal too! Boooo. I guess it’s been infected with the “trying to keep up with the Jones’s” disease. I can’t believe how much this is costing us.\
Kevin and I started marathoning Friday Night Lights (still available for free at NBC.com) and we love it! I promised Kev I wouldn’t watch any episodes without him, though it has been hard. The show isn’t at all like the movie, imo, though I am only through episode 6. It is more like Hoosiers meets Home Front, set now. One of the best parts is the coach’s marriage. It is a realistic portrayal of a happy, loving relationship (unlike the Camdens who talk a good game but sneak around actually don’t seem to trust each other) where they support each other instead of relying on “humorous” put-downs to show affection.\
Only 3 more weeks until Paris! YAYAYAYAY Super YAY! -
The Ficlets Logo’s Story
Jenna Marino has written a fantastic blog entry about how she came up with the logo for ficlets. I love the logo so much, and a bunch of people asked me how we came up with it. Mostly, I’ve just shrugged and said “magic?” Now, you can get the real story from the designer who came up with it!
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Web 2.0 Expo: Bridging the Gap, OpenAuth and Widgets
Greg and I presented at Web 2.0 Expo today in a presentation called Bringing the Gap Between Desktop and Web. It went well, although we were hoping to have some more announcements to make. There was a lot of discussion of the widget space, microformats (which 99% of the audience hadn’t heard of which surprised me), a little on OpenID and I got to talk about OpenAuth! I’ve had to stay quiet about it for months now, but I’ve been using it for a while, and it’s one of the things I’m most proud of AOL for doing.\
What’s OpenAuth It’s AOL opening up its authentication system to the web at large. We used it in ficlets instead of us having to come up with our own user system, maintaining all those passwords, writing code for encryption, sending those “oops, I forgot my password” e-mails, and re-inventing that wheel for the millionth time, I didn’t have to worry about it at all.\
I was able to integrate OpenAuth with Rails in about twenty minutes. And for those who don’t have AIM screennames, or don’t want them, we supported OpenID, which took about forty-five minutes to integrate.\
I linked to the presentation up there, but if you missed it, here are the slides. I mentioned my triple-headed widget that works in Dashboard, Opera and AIM Pages as well.\
Now, it’s time for me to go write some more stuff for the book and try to get caught up.